Who Are You
Tessa Finlev
Research Manager, Ten-Year Forecast
After being a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya from 2005-2007, Tessa came to IFTF has a program manager for the Ten-Year Forecast Team in 2008. Enamored with the process of creating foresight, Tessa believes that many of the challenges we face when attempting to create lasting and positive peace might find unexpected solutions within these processes.
Tessa recently returned to IFTF as Research Manager for the Ten-Year Forecast Team after completing her M.A. in International Political Economy and Development from Fordham University. Her research focused primarily on international economics, global financial markets, the internationalization of intellectual property rights, transitional justice, and conflict resolution—specifically looking at Somalia and Northern Uganda. Tessa is interested in how all these factors interact to create a more or less equitable world. While at Fordham she received funds to travel to Kenya and South Africa to engage in grassroots and African lead futures thinking.
Her current work focuses on:
- Researching the future of development, poverty, justice, and conflict resolution.
- How the past, present, and future interact to complicate development and peace efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Facilitating a broader understanding of Africa beyond poverty, war, and AIDS.
- Working to ensure nonwestern, pro-poor perspectives are evident within global forecasts.
- Building collaboration between futurists and conflict resolution experts
Tessa has a B.A. from University of California at Santa Cruz in Anthropology. Her first language, though no longer her best, is Danish.
- Follower her on twitter—@futressa
- Read her blog—Foresight for Peace: an odyssey to my future
- Email her-tfinlev@iftf.org